4:00pm-5:00pm: Prime Minister Stephen Harper and National Chief Shawn Atleo will engage in a dialogue with the Chairs about the outcomes of the plenary session

The proceedings apparently won’t be televised and the Prime Minister won’t be taking questions from reporters afterwards. As noted, a ceremonial meeting with the Governor General is expected to occur at Rideau Hall after the meetings at Langevin.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-plan-for-fridays-meeting/feed/18Sheriff Mulcair: Halloween at Stornowayhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/sheriff-mulcair-halloween-at-stornoway/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/sheriff-mulcair-halloween-at-stornoway/#commentsThu, 01 Nov 2012 00:18:48 +0000Mitchel Raphaelhttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=309941NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair celebrated his first Halloween in Stornoway, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition. Kids form the neighbourhood popped by for treats as did several…

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair celebrated his first Halloween in Stornoway, the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition. Kids form the neighbourhood popped by for treats as did several NDP MPs and the their children. Mulcair was dressed as sheriff. A nod to Alberta or just being tough on crime?

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair held his first in a series of garden parties at Stornoway, an annual custom also held at 24 Sussex and the Farm at Kingsmere, which is the official residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons. When it was the media’s turn at Stornoway, the ground under a huge tent was still mushy from rain and a party earlier in the week. Mulcair’s wife, Catherine Pinhas, helped host the event and indicated she doesn’t enjoy having her picture taken. She said she will pose for future holiday cards when duty calls. NDP staff said she will have to get over that aversion if their leader plans to become the next prime minister of Canada.

CBC host Evan Solomon arrived a bit late to the party and missed the buffet, which included white chocolate mousse branded with the NDP logo. He was left to nibble on a cheese platter and finished the last of the New Brunswick oysters at the oyster bar. Talk turned to the Twitter hashtag of Solomon’s show Power and Politics, which is #PnP. PnP is also the acronym used on gay hookup sites for “party and play,” which means searching for sex and drugs. One attendee at the party who follows the hashtag quipped that it made for an interesting Twitter feed. Solomon joked that must be why his ratings are up.
As the party wound down around 10 p.m., Mulcair told the waiters to go around and let everyone know it was last call. This impressed much of the media since such announcements are rarely made at parties at the official residences.

Not voting with your minister

NDP MP Randall Garrison’s private member’s bill, C-279, which aims to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Human Rights Act, passed second reading by a vote of 150 to 132. With a majority government the bill needed Conservative support to survive. Fifteen Tories voted in favour. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty supported it. His wife, Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Christine Elliott, co-sponsored a similar bill in Ontario, which just passed on June 13. Labour Minister Lisa Raitt supported the bill this time, as well as when it was first introduced, drawing her the support of a trans woman who volunteered on her campaign in the last election. Conservative MP Shelly Glover was such an ardent supporter that she sent a letter to her party colleagues asking them to support the bill. As a Winnipeg police officer, she worked with transgendered sex-trade workers and said she could not return home to face the trans people she worked with if she did not support it. Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay of B.C. also supported the bill, even though she is the parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who voted against the bill. She says she dealt with several cases involving transgendered Canadians when she was a member of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. She told Nicholson how she would be voting. Findlay said he accepted that it would be a free vote, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper had promised.

Kenney challenges Trudeau

A special reception was held on the Hill to mark Philippine Independence Day. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney addressed the crowd and quipped that a boxing match should be arranged between Liberal MP Justin Trudeau—who recently beat Conservative Sen. Patrick Brazeau in a charity boxing match—and extremely popular Philippine boxer and congressman Manny Pacquiao. Kenney quipped that, in the Philippines, there is “God, the Virgin Mary and then Manny Pacquiao.” Kenney said if Trudeau took the challenge against Pacquiao, a world champion, then he would get into the ring with Liberal MP Denis Coderre. Trudeau declined the challenge.

When, a decade or so ago, his activism in support of same-sex marriage triggered death threats, Rev. Brent Hawkes would call his friend Jack Layton, the Toronto city councillor who, along with his wife and colleague Olivia Chow, had done so much to champion gay rights, and gave him the specifics. The bullies said they’d turn up at this or that event, and promised violence. Layton was always determined to show up. When Hawkes, wearing a bulletproof vest, officiated at the 2001 double wedding ceremony that eventually led to the legalization of gay marriage, Layton was there.

Now here they were again, Layton and Hawkes, on stage at Roy Thomson Hall. Layton was dead—“cruelly gone, at the pinnacle of his career,” as eulogist Stephen Lewis put it—his body within a flag-draped casket that over the last days, amid much pomp, had travelled to Parliament Hill, to Quebec, and to Toronto’s City Hall, where thousands came, waited to gaze upon him, many with tears in their eyes.

Before Hawkes was an audience composed of some of the most powerful people in Canada, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who, while in opposition, had been a leading antagonist in the fight for gay marriage. This was a state funeral—an extraordinary gesture normally reserved for past and present governors general, prime ministers and cabinet ministers, but one that Harper had offered Layton’s family. Hawkes did not exploit the moment—not to partisan ends, anyway. Rather, he dwelt on the way Layton’s life, at its best—despite his mistakes, his “normal imperfections,” to quote Lewis again—could be used as a model to live better. “If the Olympics can make us prouder Canadians, maybe Jack’s life can make us better Canadians,” Hawkes said, noting that Layton was always careful to ask after his husband, John. “It’s about remembering, about remembering to say, ‘Hi, Brent. How’s John doing?’ Hawkes paused, looking into the hall. “Hi, Prime Minister. How’s Laureen doing?”

Laureen, emotional next to her husband, exchanged a tearful glance with Harper. The interjection, which generated laughs followed by whooping applause, was a clever way to acknowledge the presence of the Prime Minister without eliciting the opprobrium of a crowd primed by partisan politics to respond with jeers. It was a Laytonesque move.

His death unleashed six days of unprecedented mourning, a phenomenon that strained credulity: the passing of a card-carrying politician had galvanized a Canada grown cynical of politics to respond with a single voice.

Hours after his death, and after the release of a deathbed letter so passionately earnest that posters quoting it began appearing just as quickly, National Post columnist Christie Blatchford wondered at the reaction: “What once would have been deemed mawkish is now considered perfectly appropriate,” she wrote. The sentiment was premature—the extent of public emotion was still unknown. Here was something different: Layton, the NDP chief, was the first Canadian opposition leader with a seat in the House to die in more than 90 years—since Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1919—and was, at 61, in the prime of his life. Apart from his recent illness, he’d been fit, energetic, possessed of an infectious bonhomie; he lived on his bike. Immediately following a bout of prostate cancer and hip surgery, he’d thrown himself into an election, waving the cane he now carried over his head like a talisman of fortune. His efforts delivered the best electoral results in NDP history: 103 seats, catapulting the party to opposition status and, for the first time ever, shunting the Liberals into third place.

Layton, now leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, would sleep just a single night in Stornoway. In the span of three months Canadians watched Layton reach the “pinnacle of his career,” only to appear, in a late July press conference, utterly diminished by what he called a “new cancer.” He was heart-stoppingly thin, heavily made up with rouge, and spoke in a thin, sandpaper voice. Yet glimpses of his old power, emanating from a reserve of energy that appeared burning just below the skin, made the display impossibly moving. Some found themselves believing that Layton, the “happy warrior,” as former NDP leader Ed Broadbent later called him, might pull through. He was dead a month later.

That narrative arc, coupled with a thirst, particularly in Layton’s hometown of Toronto, for meaningful political engagement, made him a paragon. Within 24 hours at Toronto City Hall, where he’d toiled as an excitable city councillor for nearly 20 years, messages written in chalk covered the courtyard, a skin of progressive rhetoric that forced even Rob Ford, Toronto’s pugnacious, anti-graffiti mayor, into voicing his admiration. When it rained that Wednesday, washing away the words, it took just hours for the display to spread again, resurrected. “They’re all back,” former mayor David Miller said. “That’s how heartfelt it is.”

Layton’s casket first came into public view Wednesday morning, in the midst of an unseasonably cold Ottawa wind. On the Hill, the carillon bells tolled 15 times, an honour guard of eight RCMP pallbearers raised him, then shouldered his casket up the Centre Block steps. The dirge of a single piper led the way. Behind him, in what became a powerful motif, Chow walked alone. In tearful comments to reporters that recalled Walt Whitman’s famous salute to Abraham Lincoln—“Oh Captain! My Captain!”—NDP MP Paul Dewar called Layton “the captain of our ship. He took us to where we needed to go and so he steered us well.” In two days, almost 13,000 people lined up in the rain to pay their respects. Layton’s body left Ottawa to the echoes of a 15-gun salute and a serenade from Andrea McCrady, the Dominion carillonneur, who rang out O Canada, then squeezed the bells into John Lennon’s Imagine and the Dominion March, composed by his great-grandfather, Phillip Layton. When the casket emerged, the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. Chow followed it down; if anything, the applause only grew.

After a brief sojourn in Gatineau, Que., it arrived in Toronto on Thursday night to the sound of the same applause. “Welcome home, Jack,” some shouted. All night, as he lay in repose in the cavernous City Hall rotunda, Toronto police stood vigil at each corner of his casket, waiting for the public visitation to begin at 9 a.m. Retired RCAF captain Richard Harrison was first in line, arriving at 5 a.m. with a framed photograph of himself and Layton propped up between two candles. Around him, a tattoo of admiration and Tommy Douglas quotes spread out in chalk across Nathan Phillips Square. “You don’t know Jack like Toronto knows Jack,” read one. “You IGNITED my faith in politics, plus you dated my aunt in high school (briefly),” read another. “Namaste,” said a third. Photographs of Layton stood alongside flowers, images of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and, for less obvious reasons, a Patti Smith LP. Former mayor Mel Lastman, always of a different political tribe than Layton’s, called him “the conscience of Toronto.”

The line of mourners coiled around City Hall—people of all descriptions waiting hours to stand nearby Layton. By Friday evening some 4,000 had done so. The responses to the casket were as varied as the people themselves. One woman gave a brief, friendly wave and walked away, another crossed herself, a third blew a kiss. A tall man in a suit and orange tie tapped his heart. A middle-aged couple holding hands bowed three times, tears streaming down their cheeks. Surrounding them in the workaday rotunda, life went on: people paid their parking tickets.

In two hours on Saturday morning, another 1,300 people came. Outside there was such an eruption of pageantry you could occasionally forget all this was generated by a death. A phalanx of television cameras had assembled, buzzing with the personalities of TV news. Two clowns arrived, mugging sadness and wearing orange mourning bands, one removing his hat as he approached the crowd. Police honour guards in their very best uniforms exhaled great yawns of cigarette smoke, waved the cloud away and posed for photographs with beaming tourists. Weddings went on as planned, brides with bouquets threading their way through the mourners.

The hearse stood idly outside wrapped in the crowd. The people, as diverse as the contents of a Toronto subway car at rush hour, stood silently in the punishing late-August sun awaiting the casket. At the first glimpse of Chow they burst forth with applause. Soon the deliberate thrum of a snare ended the silence. The pipe band marched into the crowd. Inside, the careful hands of the Toronto police honour guards, gloved in white, lifted Layton to their collective shoulders. The casket, now in full daylight under a cloudless sky, set the crowd off again. The loaded hearse nosed forward, and Chow, walking alone, followed. At each new section of onlookers, a new wave of applause; occasionally she nodded, but mainly she kept her focus on the casket. As the hearse left the City Hall grounds, the mob began clapping in unison.

Heading south toward Roy Thomson Hall, the procession crawled down broad, tree-lined University Avenue. Behind it followed the People’s Procession, a citizen group invited to join the Layton entourage, many walking their bikes. At Queen Street, the cyclists began chiming their bells in unison, a great chorus that rose up from the pavement like upended church bells. They arrived at Roy Thomson Hall—and at gathering places around Toronto and the country—in the thousands to watch the service. When Lewis, the eulogist, called Layton’s letter “a manifesto for social democracy,” many within and without cheered, though the Tories in the hall glowered. But when, in his homily, Hawkes, Layton’s old friend, related the words he spoke during their last meeting—“Jack, I want to say to you now something that I know you will hear shortly. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ ”—it was as if the words were being uttered by all.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-long-goodbye-2/feed/6This is the week that washttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/this-is-the-week-that-was/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/this-is-the-week-that-was/#commentsFri, 11 Jun 2010 16:13:36 +0000Aaron Wherryhttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=132713Here is a story about the exact type of portable toilet used for the Stornoway garden party.…

In the middle of Liberal Leader Michel Ignatieff’s yard was a blue plastic children’s wading pool. A cardboard plaque proclaimed it to be “Fake Lake Harper” and warned “No Diving.” Another sign declared the pond to be a project funded by the federal economic action plan, “supporting Canada’s fake lake industry.”

Reporters were invited to lounge on vinyl Muskoka chairs and watch plastic ducks and tiny boats bobbing in the pond, while recorded loon calls played in the background. Life jackets were available for anyone who wanted to venture into the three-inch deep waters.

One boat—carrying muppet Ernie and his rubber duckie—was dubbed the “Captain Tony,” after Industry Minister Tony Clement, whose Muskoka riding has been flooded with cash in advance of the G-8 summit.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/whatever-floats-your-boat/feed/0What goes on herehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-goes-on-here/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-goes-on-here/#commentsWed, 09 Jun 2010 13:35:47 +0000Aaron Wherryhttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=131704It presently is garden party season in Ottawa—the Speaker’s reception at Kingsmere was last evening, the leader of the opposition hosts at Stornoway tonight, there’s probably something at 24 Sussex…

It presently is garden party season in Ottawa—the Speaker’s reception at Kingsmere was last evening, the leader of the opposition hosts at Stornoway tonight, there’s probably something at 24 Sussex at some point. The press gallery is in these cases invited to mix with the political class in smart casual wear and, at least in the case of 24 Sussex, an inflatable castle is provided for children.

Recently in Washington, Vice President Biden hosted a similar fete and subsequent pictures of the press frolicking with members of the Obama administration have apparently started something of a debate. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder has gone to some length to explain his attendance. Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Yglesias, Jim Newell and Ta-Nehisi Coates add their thoughts. The following from Coates.

Consumers of news should ask themselves a very simple question when they see these sorts of events: What is the White House’s agenda? What is their interest in inviting a gaggle of journalists and their families over for a party? What are they trying to achieve?

By the logic of the press corps, these White House social events have no real effect on the news narrative. I find that interesting. There are some very smart people in the the White House. It would seem that by now they would know their soirée press strategy has been a miserable failure. And yet they press on. I wonder why?

Some full disclosure, such as it is.

I’ve been in Ottawa for approximately two and a half years now. I’ve not partaken of a garden party, though I’m not sure if that has to do with any specific ethical reasons, so much as a general aversion to socializing.

I also once had dinner at Stornoway. Shortly after Mr. Ignatieff became leader each major media outlet’s Ottawa bureau was invited over for an evening. I was seated by Feschuk and, if memory serves, we most passed the time making juvenile jokes while the adults discussed more serious matters.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-goes-on-here/feed/0Ignatieff on Ignatieffhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/ignatieff-on-ignatieff-4/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/ignatieff-on-ignatieff-4/#commentsSun, 25 Oct 2009 18:53:31 +0000Aaron Wherryhttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=88860As mentioned, here is more of last Saturday’s conversation at Stornoway.
On that trip to the Shepherds of Good Hope.What was shocking was to see people who’d obviously never …

As mentioned, here is more of last Saturday’s conversation at Stornoway.

On that trip to the Shepherds of Good Hope.What was shocking was to see people who’d obviously never had to go to a line-up for food in their lives. I think what was a bit painful was the cameras were there and some of them were very, very unhappy about that. And so what was registering on my face was discomfort partly for them … What’s so puzzling about this recession, it’s the worst recession in 20 years, it’s that it’s largely invisible. But you go to a line like that and you suddenly see that it’s not just the usual street people, it’s a lot of other people, who don’t know how they got there, that are shocked that they’re there and I was shocked for them, I guess that that was my reaction.

One of the challenges politically is to make some of this visible to Canadians. I want recovery. Everybody thinks if you’re in opposition what you want is for everything to get worse, I actually want everything to get better. I don’t want … I want all the green shoots we can get.. but, you know, one of the things about the recession is the invisibilty of those who are paying the price. And so, you go there and you see it. I guess I was shocked. That’s, shocked is not quite the word, but just, it really hits you. In the same way that, in Thunder Bay it hits you. On Thursday morning we were in a lumber mill that’s been closed for two years and the superintendent comes down everyday just to make sure it hasn’t been broken in. You know, brand new machinery standing idle. And you see something on the guy’s face that really hits you. Poliitcs is just about people. And you see that and it kind of stays in your mind afterwards.

The great thing about politics is you get to see the country raw and unplugged. You get to see things that most other Canadians don’t see. You get to live your country’s life … and so, you know, I haven’t had the greatest autumn, but it’s an unforgettable experience and a positive one, in the sense that it deepens your sense of what your country is and what it’s going through. Because you’re in opposition, you actually get out and see it much more than the prime minister does.

On whether he’s enjoying himself.I’d be lying to you if I said I enjoyed it every day of the week. But it’s been, I think what I said before is true, the most challenging thing I’ve ever tried to do. When it’s going well, the most fun … It’s a team, you feel you’re part of a team and people believe in you and we’re pushing towards the same goal which is a good, you know compassionate, you know creative, you know centre of the road of the government that really does good things for Canada. When it doesn’t go well, you have to take responsibility. It’s about being responsible for it and keep on going.

On whether he feels like he’s being himself.Yes. But I think that I’m happiest when I’m more unplugged. That makes my guy’s a little anxious, but I’m happier when I’m unplugged … I think that you’ve got to learn the country. You’ve got to take it into your veins again … You’ve got know it in your heart. You’ve got to know, you’ve got to register what that supervisor of that saw mill is saying to you in his eyes as opposed to his words. You’ve got to take it into your heart what that very well dressed black man in the soup kitchen … he’s not even talking to you, but what he’s saying to you is help … In terms of going from 05 to 09, I think there’s a perception that I’ve got overly cautious. I hope what I’m doing is getting more precise. There’s quite a lot out there that, in a weird way, I’ve had to fight for the right to be heard … ‘He’s just visiting. He’s only it for himself.’ So I’ve had to fight to kind of say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m a Canadian, I’m here to stay and he’s what I’ve got to say.’

On vision and policy and ideas. In terms of policies and ideas, the vision at Vancouver of a learning society in which we get early learning and child care for every single Canadian family that wants it, we get every Aboriginal Canadian believing that an education is for them, we get every Canadian to understand that investing in universities and science and technology is not something for someone else, it’s the key to our whole future economy. There was real content there. I’ve said some important things about India and China, which are not just about promoting market share, they’re about changing the whole orientation of our society from north-south to out over the Pacific … it’s one of the biggest things that’s happening to our country that we’re not seeing. Suddenly, for the first time in a generation, the U.S. consumer’s not going to pull us out. We have to change the whole orientation of not just our trade performance, but our cultural, intellectual, we’ve just got to turn around. And I’ve said, and I said it before the Pittsburgh summit, I said we’ve got to stop clinging to the G8 and embrace the G20 and lead in the G20 with a secretariat. Say, ok, we’re a smaller player in a bigger club, but let’s use that as an opportunity. That’s an idea.

On the economic front, just last week I was saying, listen… and you learn this in your own riding, I’ve seen the manufacturing sector in my own riding clobbered since 06, but when you talk to guys who cast aluminum for Chrysler and you talk to them about how they can keep their jobs, they know one thing, we’re shooting too much heat up the stack. We’ve got to get our energy costs down, number one. And we’ve got to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, number two. Because fossil fuels are going straight up. So that’s what I said in Vancouver. We’ve got to bet the competitive store on energy efficiency and renewables. And we’ve got to understand that the paradox of Canadian strength is that our energy resources are simulatenously a vulnerablility. They make us lazy… energy efficiency is just going to be key to, it’s a little technical, but unit cost productivity. This government has spent four years doing nothing about Canadian productivity and nothing about this issue. And I’ve also said quite a lot about increasing interprovincial energy sharing, smart grids and interprovincial power grids. We’ve got north-south intergration of our energy supplies in ways that are weakening the east-west. Now, nobody thinks you can make water run uphill. Government can’t, you know, the north-south axis of our energy markets make sense, but we may be fragmenting the country as a result. It’s great news when Quebec starts to wield power into Ontario and Ontario starts to wield nuclear back into… if you want to get big coal fired plants offline in Ontario, you’ve got to increase interprovincial energy sharing. I’m the first person… people say, I’ve taken 10 minutes to say this, but I’ve taken 10 minutes because there’s actually quite a lot out there and there’ll be more. And one of the other things I would say is, the question Canadians will ask in ten years about this government is, what did we get for $56-billion? What did we get that made us more productive, more competitive and guaranteed the jobs of the future? And there isn’t a Canadian, I think, that actually believes that this deficit bought us our future. Canadians are prepared to say it got us through until tomorrow morning, but there isn’t a Canadian with any confidence, because it goes deeper than this issue of this ridiculous, hyper-partisan allocation of money, it’s what are we getting that’s going to make this country stronger.

On communicating all that. Well, I think it’s a matter of, I’ve had quite a few ideas out already, there’ll be more, I’ve got to get to a moment where they’re being heard. That’s a personal challenge which I accept. I’ve spent a lot of time being framed up in a certain way, which means that people aren’t listening. And that’s my challenge as a communicator. I’m not, don’t mishear that, I’m not blaming anybody, I take the responsibility. There’s stuff out there. I’m the same guy I was in 2005. I’ve got to get myself heard. And I think, in fact, Canadians are ready to listen, because they’re troubled, precisely by the question I raised, what are we getting for this? Where are we going? And the person who can say, we’ve got to have a plan that grows the economy, makes us more energy efficienct, bets the store on education, makes sure we’ve got a health care system in fifteen years that can take care of us and makes sure that people can retire in decency, is going to be the guy people follow. And the thing about Mr. Harper is that he can’t, he’s spent the money and he can’t guarantee that there’ll be pensions there, he can’t guarantee there’ll be health care there, he has nothing to tell you about producitivty and he has nothing to tell you about where the jobs of tomorrow are going to come from. And I have to fill that space.

… But I think I’ve said already what I really believe, which is that what I’ve got to offer is what comes next, what’s the future here. Look, Mr. Harper, after nearly destroying his government in December 2008, basically moved into the Liberal house. But there’s no vision, absolutely no vision of where we’re going to be in five, 10 years. I’ve talked a lot about 2017 because it’s a way of focusing the mind on the question that actually bothers Canadians. The thing I pick up is relief that civilization as we know it didn’t end, right? And I think Harper gets a bounce from that. Everybody was told civilization as you know it is going to end by the spring of 2009. And then June came along and there was actually a little, tiny millimetre of green shoot. Now Canadians are thinking, ok, more shoots, pretty good… but the anxiety that remains for Canadians, what did we get for $56-billion, how are we going to dig ourselves out of it, and if the American market is going to be flat for three, four, five years, they’ve got a trillion dollar deficit, how do we make our living in this world? And I just think there’s no plan there whatever. And I’ve at least said, India and China, education and research, energy efficiency. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I’m still learning. And there are three or four other pieces that have to be there before Canadians start to think, yeah, well he’s at least thinking about our future. He’s not up there at 50,000 feet, he’s trying to address the anxieties and anguish that I saw in that food line, that I see in he supervisor’s face in Thunder Bay. And you have to make that connection. And it’s also not enough to just have lots of ideas, lots of policies. People have got to feel, the guy, he’s in my corner. He’s a little funny, he’s got a funny name, he’s been outside the country, but he’s in my corner. I mean, that’s the connection you have to make. It’s very visceral. And I feel I make the connection constantly with people. I don’t think I’m dreaming.